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ninjawolf77
Reviews
Final Destination 2 (2003)
Awful Conclusion to Final Destination
A movie that took the teenage splatter flick in new directions is put to rest here by a sequel which returns to the usual improbable setups and warped laws of physics to burn, slice, and squish teenagers in ways you've never seen.
FD1 had immensely imaginative death traps, which could almost always be completely construed as freak accidents. FD2 stretches credibility in that field - a man who's hand gets caught in a stopped garbage disposal while his apartment burns down around him? (Has this EVER happened to ANYONE?) Barbed wire that can tear through human bone? (By the way, that was from Cube.) And has NO driver in this movie ever heard of using brakes?? By the end, ideas have run short and the movie breaks all the rules it has established to kill off the last character (Eugene).
Speaking of breaking rules, what is with the cop's gun which can now evade basic physics, because it isn't part of "death's design"? Since it suggests invincibility until "your number is up", then why wouldn't you go out and just have an all-out joyride until you became "next".
Splatter films only work because you can see and relate to the psyche of the characters. Once the circumstances of the situation become completely irrational, it fails to scare or entertain.
The Core (2003)
Armageddon Revisited
I'm reminded of an episode from the first season of "Futurama" where Fry suggests that people don't like to watch intelligent stuff because it makes them feel stupid. This film is an unfortunate testament to that statement. Would it totally kill the ratings to include some basis of hard core scientific fact in a sci-fi movie? Shoot out $1000 to a professor at a university somewhere and get his buy-in - would that blow the $85 million budget on the movie?
Let's say that the Earth's core does actually spin, an electromagnetic weapon somehow has caused it to stop, an eccentric doctor has invented a substance that can withstand the pressures and heat of the mantle and the core, and that "men in black" actually walk around recruiting high profile scientists to save the world on occasion. (I'll give you all that.) Logical and scientific black-holes in the plot abound. For example:
1. Dr. Brazelton, in 20 years in the desert, has not once contacted the department of energy regarding "unobtainium" which can withstand hundreds of times the amount of thermodynamic abuse as what our existing engineering standards can produce?
2. Where did the government secure $50 billion from in THREE MONTHS to build the ship and the simulator, and why are we deploying NASA crews to pilot it? Wouldn't a submarine crew be much more adept? How about ANY military crew that does not scream at and bicker with each other at the helm?
3. This film has utterly the WEAKEST excuse for a computer hacker role in any movie I've ever seen. Pretend that I'm the most notorious computer hacker known to the world - are you going to let ME sit at mission ops in a government facility during a mission to save the world?
4. Why is the ship built in segments? If you lost one segment wouldn't you pretty much be dead anyway? Alternateively, why would you build more ship than you need?
5. Are plutonium cells built in ISO regulated containers, such that you can just pull one out of a nuclear reaction engine and put it in a nuclear weapon? And if the heat->power thing was so obvious, why did the ship even use a nuclear reactor? Does anyone else have a problem with the overly simple "just touch the wires against the ship's skin and the reaction takes place" theory?
6. 1 is not a prime number. Read a math book before you start spouting scientific cinema at us.
I'm sure this will be the kind of film that will be first released on a bare-bones DVD and then a special edition DVD with 6 commentary tracks, 2 hours of removed footage, and 6 hours of special features. It is just pitiful that with the kind of movie budgets studios put out today, that there is such little attention to a movie's foundation, and it is insulting that Hollywood tries to appeal to viewers on such an unintelligent level.
After Armageddon, I honestly believe this film is nothing more than an experiment to see what minimal level of writing Hollywood has to include in a movie to make it viewable to the public.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Get off the stage, Dave!!
A die hard David Lynch fan, I hated this movie. Even an advocate of "Lost Highway" (which plays like an episode of Full House compared to this), I absolutely hated it. I hated every single overdrawn, over-directed, over-acted frame of it. Forget the rental cost - I hate that I lost more than two hours of an evening of my life to a movie which provides less closure to the viewer than the mysteries of Stonehenge.
As movie lovers, we are drawn to accept David Lynch's attempts at artistry as Gospel. I regret to inform you, this does not disqualify the line between fine artistry and creative static. This movie not only crosses that line - it obliterates, places curses on, buries, builds shrine to, resurrects, and annihilates that line again, all the while walking pretentiously as a piece of self-congratulatory art!
If your movie involves plot or characters (and I don't even ask that it does), then pick a storyline, pick some characters, and stick with them! Pick a conclusion that leaves me with some sense that it was worth two hours of my life to view your work! Forget an ending even - pick a conclusion, period! The ramblings of one's imagination do not inherently constitute art, and this movie plays at no definable level above that.
Major points taken off for: a completely unnecessary lesbian love scene serving no purpose except to maintain Lynch's tradition of showing naked women in vulnerable characters; at least 3 different five-minute scenes, about as coherent to the rest of the movie as commercial breaks (cops in the diner, the hitman sequence, the theater sequence); the utter lack of anything even remotely resembling a conclusion (To reference Ebert, the only way we know the movie is over is that the credits begin); blatant and total rip-offs from previous Lynch works, including the Badalamenti score (Lost Highway) and the theater sequence (Black Lodge, Twin Peaks).
I would say "enjoy", however I think this movie actually aims to leave you irritated.
Graverobbers (1988)
Absolutely the Worst
This is a true candidate for the absolute worst movie ever made - worse even than Manos The Hands of Fate. Everything about this movie is terrible. Absolutely everything. From the dialog including lines like "Stop! In the name of love, Stop!", to the original song "I don't sleep with strangers", sung as if performed by a muppet, to the end credits which roll so painfully slow that one could use them for eye charts (also allowing time for further musical injustices to be performed), there is not a single frame of cinematic value here.
I recommend viewing by true horror and movie buffs, simply as a showcase for how bad bad can get. This truly sets a new standard against which all bad movies may be judged.